The hero's story: Once upon a time there was a college graduate who decided to travel across the US to find his calling by himself. He became overwhelmed and depressed and got stuck in Pittsburgh and got burntout after working for a year at a failing web design start up. He ran back home to Alaska and pissed away a year of his life as a NEET (not in education, employment, or training) living with parents. Then he got a job in digital marketing at a local firm. We join our hero now, 3 months into his gainfully employed position. What are his advesaries?
Enemies:
Sensibility to Social Threat
Our hero is extremely weak against a particular type of loneliness: The feeling of not belonging.
You don't have any close friends, and you were excited about getting a job because you would meet new people. However...
The open office layout is kryptonite for our hero, especially because he works in a department with 5 female coworkers who don't his interests and have husbands in the military. They invite each other to lunch without a glance at you, they talk about things you have no business hearing, they put their headphones on and you do the same even though you are dying to talk to someone right now, about anything, you don't care. You pretend that you are a ghost and the idea brings you solace, because it helps you realize that you are not entitled to their attention.
But is it too late now? Will you be fired on Monday for failing to make meaningful social connections? Use your creativity, dammit, the hero tells himself. You can connect to anyone if you try. Don't just do the small talk. Also, they don't hate you. You need to stop ruminating on the times you say stupid shit. You aren't going to get fired for being aloof. You're more likely to be fired for...
Internet Addiction
Our hero is probably going to get fired for this. The truth is, our hero is a piece of shit.
At first, our hero was grateful for his job. But, as his work involves the penny slot machine that is SEO, there is little immediate feedback for it. Each day is an exercise in expanding a minimum amount of tasks to fill in an 8 hour workday and trying to justify them on a worklog. Mostly he browses the internet. He has probably spent 7 hours browsing the internet some days, even though he knows he should be proactive. He just doesn't know how. Our hero needs to be smacked hard in the face and told what to do- for the last two weeks, he feels like he isn't in a position to make decisions by himself anymore.
This of course, ties into your lack of connection with your coworkers, hell, the company. And here is perhaps your biggest problem of them all:
Illusions of Grandeur
You are not only a piece of shit, but you also feel like you're entitled to meaningful work. This is why you run litcat, and this is why you take on freelance web design clients outside of work. But fuck you, hero. The hero is tired after regular work days. He is spread thinly and behind on everything. And he juggles 5 outside clients because he didn't major in marketing, he majored in psychology, because he is a dipshit, who believes he can improve himself to make up for the fact that he can't charge enough when meeting new clients because he is the worst kind of socially anxious and has to type to himself in second person and 3rd person to actually make sense to himself in his head, fuck, goddamn.
I'm not doing well. I need to sleep. I want to ask for advice, but I don't know where to start.
So the real question is: Have they talked to you about performance before? Because if they have, and if you still suck, then they know you're untrainable. But if they haven't, this is their chance. Without knowing more I'ma guess you're more likely to get a bad review than you are to get the sack and the best thing about bad reviews is they leave lots of room for improvement.
You know what your problem is - you're applying yourself everywhere but work. I don't know what sort of moonlighting clause you have in place, but if you're doing the same work on the side that you're doing under employ you're violating it. And if you're not, then you should probably try to bridge out into doing that, too.
Here's a truism that the shy can't hear often enough: no one gives half as much of a shit about you as you think they do. You know why they're ignoring you? Because you're pretending to be a ghost. We tend to have exactly the expectations of others that they set for us; if you hide in the corner and stare at the floor, I'm going to assume you don't want me to talk to you. If you wear a vibrant, loud shirt I'll assume you want to be noticed. If you smile a lot I'll assume you're happy. If you glare at me all day cracking your knuckles I'll assume you're looking for a reason to punch me in the face. This is us, as social creatures, picking up on the social cues available.
I haven't worked a jobby-job in - fuck. Ten years now. It's super nice. Back when I did, I would get a big pile of things that needed doing and when they were done, I'd tell someone. Then they would give me more stuff to do. That does not mean that I was in a constant race against the clock to do everything as fast as possible, that means that I set a pace I could meet and ensured that my employers used me for everything they were paying me for. The only time I didn't do that was when I ended up in a position where I was actively, decisively sidelined from anything involving expertise and that period lasted about six weeks.
Now that I'm freelance, working with a bunch of freelancers, we make it really clear when we're done with something because we all want to get done and go home. I'll bet your coworkers do, too. Instead of doing your damnedest not to connect, try heading over to the Queen Bee's cubicle, say "ahem, excuse me, but I'm done with everything on my plate - can I help you with anything?"
"local" firms rarely have the luxury of dead weight. There's probably lots of shit that isn't getting done because there isn't staff to do it. BE THAT STAFF. Again - no jobby jobs in 10 years but the last jobby job I had, there was a board meeting about what to do with all the projects that couldn't move forward without my involvement (the decision was made to hemorrhage $20m in contracts). In the jobby job before that I had legit two business cards depending on which set of clients and what sort of work I'd be doing for them. Only guy in the company. Even now, I'm the only guy who does live sound and post and setup. Obviously my experience with the board room thing taught me that no one is indispensable but fuckin'A there is nothing worse than being bored at work.
You've got three jobs. One pays you most of your money. One pays you a little. One pays you nothing. One you do not enjoy. One you enjoy a little. One you enjoy a lot.
Two jobs you can do. Done it my whole goddamn life. Three jobs? Nope. Sorry, buddy. It's like dating two girls - you can do it, but if you're gonna do it right you have to put in twice the time. There's only 24 hours in a day and if you're wasting seven of them surfing the Internet it's gonna be even harder.
The things you enjoy about freelance? Find a way to do that at work. Purge your freelance clients because if that isn't getting you in trouble it will. And acknowledge that they're giving you a certain amount of money in exchange for a certain amount of work and give it to them. If that number is greater than the work they're currently giving you, point out the discrepancy and give them every opportunity to remedy the situation. Put in a decent day of accomplishments so that when you do your own shit you feel proud, not guilty.
Have you seen Neil Patel? Dude gets into SEO like Stephen Colbert gets into Lord of the Rings. It ain't my cup'o'tea but ain't nobody paying me, neither. Someone puts me on salary to do SEO shit? I'n'I am printing up cards that say "master of the dark arts" and digging into that shit like it's Rocky Road ice cream. 'cuz really? If you're supposed to be doing SEO and you're spending all day browsing the Internet, fuckin' learn some shit about SEO off the Internet and apply it like it's your job.
'cuz it is.
Look me in the (figurative) eyes: I mix reality television for a living. I'm fucking good at it. I generate content that in no way edifies my existence on this earth and does not in any way make the world a better place. But that's what they pay me to do and that's what they expect of me so I put my goddamn back into it. There is nothing I've worked on - for years - that I would recommend you watch. NOTHING. I've got one friend that actively consumes the content I help make (despite a viewership in the millions) and she doesn't usually make it to the end of the season. But fuckin'A, that's my name in the credits, that's my work in exchange for their money, that's the increment of my (increasingly finite) time on this earth that I have exchanged to them in order to feed my family and I will not be phoning it in, thanks.
Li'l story. I was "the car dude" in high school. Between my dad and I we had fifteen cars, maybe three of which were operable at any given time. And a friend of mine got in a fender bender and asked if I could pull it out so her fender stopped scraping her tire when she turned.
Intially I pulled it out and walked away. But then my father - who's "advice giving" episodes can be counted on one hand - pointed out that if I left it the way it was, my shitty lack-of-bodywork would be driving around town for an indeterminate period of time and whenever anyone asked her who half-assed the thing back into operability, the name she'd give would be mine. So instead of calling it quits at 11am on Saturday, I reefed on that thing until 5pm Sunday, bondo, microplanes, 400 grit, sanded primer until the fucking fender was paint-ready. And she didn't ask me for that. And I wouldn't let her pay for it. But fuckin'A if my work is gonna be driving around town, it isn't gonna be half-assed.
I don't half-ass and neither should you. It isn't a guarantee of success and it won't make you fireproof (see: $20m in lost revenue) but it sure as hell is a ward against bad performance reviews.
You wanted a kick in the ass? There you go. Work like it's your job, party like it's the weekend and stand behind every fucking thing you do.